Out-Of-Bounds Technique in Photoshop Elements

Article written using Adobe Photoshop Elements 6 with Windows 7 Vista

Have you ever seen a page where it looks like someone in a photo is popping out of the frame? I’ll show you how to do this out-of-bounds technique on your next digital scrapbooking layout!

For this photo, I wanted to make my guys’ arms look like they were coming out of the frame, so first I positioned the frame so parts of their arms extended beyond it.

Next, using the Lasso Tool, I extracted those parts of the guys’ arms that were under the frame and extended beyond the frame, plus a little extra.

With the “marching ants” going around the guys’ arms and the photo layer selected, I held down Ctrl+J. This made a layer with only the guys’ arms. I moved the frame below the arms and increased the Opacity back to 100%.

Using the Rectangular Marquee Tool with the original photo layer selected, I drew around the frame, then hit Ctrl+J. This created a photo that fit inside the frame. After I hid the original photo by clicking on the little eye icon next to its layer, here was the result. Now the arms look like they are outside the frame.

To make realistic drop shadows for the extracted arms, I selected the “arm layer” and hit Ctrl+J to make a copy of the layer, then hid the extra layer. The extra layer was my insurance layer to use if I needed to go back to the beginning.

Selecting the visible arm layer, I double-clicked on the function Soft Edge (#1 in the image below). This gave the arms a drop shadow. To adjust the shadow, I double-clicked on the fx on the right side of the layer (#2 below) which brought up a Style Settings window (#3 below). I played with the settings until I achieved the look I wanted. That left one thing to fix: the strange dark lines (#4 below).

The dark lines were parts of the shadow on the extracted arms, and I didn’t want them. With the arm layer still selected, I right-clicked and chose “Simplify Layer.” This “glued” the shadow to the extracted arms. Zooming way in, I carefully erased parts of the shadowed arms using the Eraser Tool to remove the dark lines.

Isn’t this a fun look? Why not give it a try? Be sure to post your out-of-bounds layouts in the Scrap Girls Gallery so we all can enjoy them. Happy Scrapping!

Tutorial written by Sue Maravelas